4. Alyx
Chapter 4
Alyx
“A re you seriously considering his offer?” Rhonda sat on the edge of the picnic table bench, a cigarette dangling between two fingers. The restaurant opened in an hour, they were set up and they had some time to kill. Nestled among the trees and bushes, the smoking area was deserted save for the two of them. Alyx didn’t smoke, but she wanted to take advantage of the rare quiet time to chat without interruptions.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. In the two days since the theater fiasco, Daniel, his offer, his blue eyes and what accepting all of the above would be like were the only things she had thought about. As promised, an envelope containing her family research arrived at the restaurant the next day. It sat unopened in her car.
“You are considering it.” Standing, Rhonda shook her head, looking around as if to ascertain they were alone, then stared at her. “You don’t know this guy. He could be some kind of crackpot and his attorney an accomplice—if the guy was really an attorney.”
“He was. I googled Martin Grange and looked him up via the California Bar Association. I found photos and news articles about him. Did the same for Daniel. They’re real. They are who they say they are.” Which made the conundrum muckier than it already was. What the hell did it say about them that they wanted to use fraud—well, not fraud, not if he was right about her. But weren’t they asking for an act? An illusion to make a business deal happen?
“You didn’t meet the attorney, sweetie. You talked to him on the phone.” Her friend grimaced.
“No, I didn’t see him but he was in captioned in a photograph with Daniel last year. The photo matched his bar association page.” Stretching, she paced away from the table and the haze of smoke. Too many possibilities crowded in her mind. Her gut twisted with indecision. She told him no at the parking garage. While the audition didn’t completely reverse her decision, she sat firmly on the fence between the risky promise of the unknown and the less certain success of the road she traveled.
“Do you hear yourself? You’re thinking about—” Rhonda glanced around again, dropping her voice to a whisper, “—getting engaged to a guy you don’t know and walking away from your life to play a part .”
“But isn’t that kind of what I always wanted to do? Be an actress, play a role, inhabit the part?”
“On. Stage.” Her friend crushed the cigarette out and snapped her fingers in front of Alyx’s face. “Wake up. This isn’t a part—this is your life.”
We’re going to have to learn the mannerisms and manners…
I’ll hire someone to teach us how to do it…
You were born for this part…
“Rhonda, I’m going to do it.”
The bottle blonde sighed and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “I knew you would. You are the most daring, adventurous, out-of-her-mind person I know. You see something you want, you go after it. You live out of your car, you shower in a gym and you’re still together and on top of things. Me, I do good for the day by day. You? See the mountain, take the mountain.”
“Tell me how you really feel.” She grinned. Rhonda was her oldest friend in Los Angeles and the reason she got the job at the steakhouse in the first place. Rhonda’d tried to talk her into sharing her apartment, but it was too cramped with Rhonda and her boyfriend. She did, however, sublet the guest room closet for her nicer outfits so they didn’t get crumpled in the car.
The older woman took her by the shoulders and stared at her. “You get everything in writing and you get some of that money up front. You also remember you have an out—anything gets hinky, you come straight to me.” Pursing her lips, she shook her head slowly. “I still think you should just say forget it. You have the information. If you want to track down your royal roots, you don’t need this guy.”
“It’s not about that.” And curiously enough, it wasn’t. She’d gotten used to having no family. She’d had sixteen years of getting used to it. Some days, she couldn’t picture what her mom and dad looked like. She remembered how they smelled—her mother’d loved Tabu perfume and her father’d favored Old Spice. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could almost imagine the feeling of their hugs, but that was it. Capturing those elusive moments was one the reasons she liked sleeping in her car. Some her best memories were falling asleep in the backseat on the way back from some adventure while her parents talked in the front seat.
On really bad days, she could close her eyes, hug her bear and soak up that feeling.
“Then why?” Rhonda tilted her head, expression curious and concerned, but lacking judgment. “Why take this kind of leap?”
“Because it’s crazy. It’s—immersion. It’s becoming someone else entirely. If I can do this, then I really do have a future in acting. It’s not just some fairytale I dreamed up one night to run away from a foster home.”
“Sweetheart, this isn’t just immersion like you’re playing a part in a movie. This is the real thing and you’re talking about marrying a guy you don’t know?”
“I’m not actually marrying him.” She went over his request so many times in the past two days she’d memorized it. He wanted an engagement. He wanted a splashy showing. He didn’t say they had to go through with it. Catching Rhonda close in a quick hug, she grinned. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll make sure I have the parachute on before I jump.”
“I worry about you,” Rhonda said, utterly unconvinced. “You need to check in with me and regularly. I want to know he hasn’t buried you in his backyard or locked you up in his cellar or something.”
She made a face. “That’s a cheery thought.”
“It’s a realistic one. You’re usually a lot more practical than this.” Dislike kissed every single word.
“Then I promise, I’ll check in and text you regularly.” It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have someone know where she was. “I’ll make sure you have the address too.”
“Good. Take selfies to, I want to be able to see that you’re fine.” She shook her head. “If you change your mind at any point, one phone call, fuck it, just show up. You can come to me.”
That helped. Maybe more than she knew. Alyx hugged her again. “Thank you.” Even if she didn’t like it, didn’t want her doing it, she wasn’t cutting ties.
After Rhonda went inside, she pulled out her cell and the crinkled business card. She weighed the decision for another minute before dialing the number. She could have texted it, but this seemed like something where it would be better if they spoke.
“Okay,” she committed. “I’m in.”
* * *
DANIEL
Daniel controlled the urge to fidget as she read through the papers. Martin stood in the center of the salon-style room with Daniel perched on the edge of a chair while she sat on the sofa opposite.
She took her time scanning the contract, reading each page—sometimes twice. Occasionally she circled something, the faint crinkle of the paper and the scritch of the pen the only sounds in the room. On the last page was the amount he’d told Martin to write in. He already had a check drawn.
“No.” Alyx shook her head, jerking her attention from the paper.
“It’s a more than equitable amount.” Martin intervened before Daniel could answer.
“It’s five million dollars. That’s way too much.” She leaned back, the papers a neat stack on her lap.
Daniel glanced at his attorney and saw a perplexed expression that mirrored his own confusion. They’d expected she might ask for more, but less?
“I’m asking you to commit to this project twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for a year. I don’t think five million is too much for that kind of investment.” He kept his voice calm, but he couldn’t keep the question out of it.
“It’s too much. Look, I work six nights a week at the steakhouse. I make about three hundred a day, average. Some days are better, some are worse, but six days a week for fifty two weeks is sixty-two thousand four hundred dollars, after taxes. Five million is way too much.”
“You want us to reduce the amount of payment?” Martin folded his arms, his frown turning speculative.
“Yes. I also want half up front. In addition, I want you to set up a scholarship fund for foster kids in California—discretionary aid to help them pay for college. If you want to invest five million, then take—I don’t know—set one million aside for me and put the rest in the scholarship fund.” She tapped the paper. “I also want an open-ended round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world, dated for one year from today. And an apartment. In my name—here in the city, and I’m the only one with keys to it.”
Clasping his hands together, Daniel leaned forward. “Alyx, the scholarship fund isn’t a problem.” Martin cleared his throat, but Daniel ignored him. “But I think you should take more than just a million. I get that you think it’s too much, but realistically—a million goes fast. What about the rest of your life?”
She shrugged. “What about it? I don’t have a house. If you pay one year of an apartment for me—it’s a done deal, no rent payments. I’m not going to have that job anymore and I’m assuming you’re going to feed me—that won’t be an expense. I can put the half you pay me up front in the bank, it can collect interest, and one year from today I collect the other half and I can get on a plane and go anywhere I want.”
“And you’re willing to sign a waiver to relieve Mr. Voldakov of any other financial remuneration associated with this year?” His attorney studied her, seeming as uncertain as Daniel was of her counteroffer.
“Yes. He’s paying for whatever lessons, clothes—” she flipped through the pages, “—travel and anything else required to deliver on the idea that I am a princess. I won’t have to spend anything. Maybe we can add a caveat that I keep the clothes— Oh, and no sex. I’m an actress, not a prostitute. I want that in the contract.”
The hard look on her face surprised the hell out of him. She’d made a similar statement in one of their earlier meetings, but it hadn’t occurred to him to add a sex clause and his body tightened in rebellion of the idea. Sex wasn’t a requirement, but he hadn’t dismissed the idea entirely. She was attractive and they were going to be in close quarters for the next several months.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t a bad idea.
“I don’t think that will be a problem.” Of course Martin didn’t think it would be a problem. He wasn’t the one signing the agreement.
“And that’s it? Those are your only stipulations?”
“Pretty much.” She nodded. “We’re not actually getting married. The legal right to my name remains mine. And your property remains yours. I’ll leave this charade with the experience, the clothes, the scholarship funds, the plane ticket and a tidy bank account. That’s all I want.”
“You realize you’re not stipulating any of the jewelry, including the engagement ring?” He ignored Martin’s huff of annoyance, because no matter what she thought or his attorney believed, a year of her life was worth a lot more than she realized. She wasn’t listing the taxes on that income either, but he would take care of those.
“Engagement ring?” Her eyebrows climbed in surprise.
“You didn’t think you would get one? I’m asking a princess to marry me. I’m thinking that calls for something fairly fat and definitely diamond.” A solitaire would be the perfect type of elegant—not that he knew much about jewelry.
“I think I’m good. It’s a symbol of our arrangement, not any real feelings.” The casual dismissal of the ring irked him, but he didn’t look too closely at that.
“Fine. Martin, I need you to amend the contract to reflect Alyx’s requirements. She agrees to study everything she needs to know about being a princess, will maintain the role full-time with no asides for auditions or a return to the life beyond what we construct. When we’re in public, we’re a loving couple. We have fun, we smile and we stare longingly into each other’s eyes. Any time we’re in the house and the staff is present, we’re also on. Now, my staff is part-time and here two or three days a week, but we can’t slip. I don’t care if anyone questions your lineage or where you’ve been all these years, because we have the truth on our side for that one. But we can’t afford any questions about us as a couple.”
“I know. We have to sell ourselves as the next great love story of all time before it becomes tabloid fodder for crash and burn. Celebrity couples do break up.” Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “Just remember, no sex.”
“If you can keep your hands to yourself—” he grinned, “—so can I.”
Her gaze flicked over him like a cold spray of water. “That won’t be a problem. Oh, and, Martin?” She glanced at the attorney. “I want evidence of the scholarship fund being set up and a cashier’s check in hand before I sign the contract.”
The attorney looked to Daniel for approval, then sighed when he nodded. “You realize you’re both certifiable?”
Daniel laughed, surprised and pleased when Alyx joined him. “I would say we’re a perfect pair.”
“Hmm.” Martin hedged his response. “I’ll draw up the papers and the checks. I’ll meet with you both in the morning.” He snapped his briefcase closed and left, disapproval hovering in his wake.
“He really doesn’t like this plan.” Alyx propped her chin on her hand and stared after him.
Filling two glasses with wine, Daniel shrugged. “He doesn’t have to be happy. He just has to do the job.” Carrying the glasses over, he held one out to her. “A toast.”
“Question first.” She took the glass and shot him quizzical glance. He didn’t miss the flash of indecision in her eyes. Buyer’s remorse was always a problem—it was up to him to keep her calm until all the t ’s were crossed and the i ’s dotted.
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Why the hell is this important to you? Five million? A pretend engagement to a virtual stranger? Stalking me? Setting up the elaborate audition? Now a contract that makes your attorney squeamish. That’s a hell of a lot of overkill just to sell some software. So—why?” She held the wineglass, her gaze sharp and assessing.
Intelligence was an attractive thing in a woman. Even when it pinned him to the spot like a target on a dartboard. “Because my company is on the cutting edge of every major security software development of the last five years and I can’t get a meeting with these people. They do business with their own kind, it’s not what you know—it’s who you know.” The knowledge wore at him like an ill-fitting shoe and rubbed him raw. It didn’t matter how innovative his work was— he wasn’t good enough. “I’m going to be creative, get my foot in the door, and then my work will do the rest.”
She pursed her lips and he worried he’d said too much, pushed too hard. “I get that.”
Another surprise in a day filled with them. “Do you?”
Lifting her shoulders, she gave him a bittersweet smile. “I’ve been the kid on the outside. It sucks. So yeah, I get it.”
Maybe she really did understand… He didn’t want to pick at those wounds. Not when Martin didn’t seem to grasp why it aggravated him to be blocked at every turn. But a company that didn’t grow, that didn’t expand, would eventually stagnate. To stay on the edge, he needed to push his boundaries everywhere.
“To new beginnings.” He held his glass out.
She stared at him for a long moment. “And a successful ending.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Their glasses clinked together and he washed down his uncertainties with the California white.
Seven days from first meeting to signed contract. It beat every other business deal, hands down.
Hopefully, it would be all the more successful.